Harry spent eleven days in North Dakota, first in Jamestown, then in Napoleon and Wishek, where by chance he picked up a trail that led him west, into the Badlands. There, during a spell of brutally hot weather at the end of July, he came within a day, perhaps two, of Kissoon, who had moved on, leaving another massacre behind. This time, there was no fire to conceal the bizarre nature of the corpses, and after a short time all reports of the incident were suppressed. But Harry had garnered enough information to be certain Kissoon had done here what he'd done in New York: located and destroyed a group of exiles from Quiddity '

Whether they too had been in the process of opening a door back into the Metacosm he could not discover, but he assumed so. Why else would Kissoon go to the trouble of slaughtering them?

The assumption begged a question that had been itching at the base of his skull since he'd left New York. Why, after being exiled in the Cosm for so many years, were these people now gaining access to Quiddity? Had they discovered some conjuration previously unknown to them, which opened doors where there had only been solid walls? Or were those walls becoming thinner for some reason, the divide between this world and the Metacosm growing frail'?

The heat did nothing for his equilibrium. Lingering in Wishek, hoping to discover where Kissoon had headed next, his fears grew gross in the swelter, and bred hallucinations. Twice in two days he thought he saw Kissoon out walking, and pursued him around corners only to find the streets empty. And at dusk, watching the solid world succumb to doubt, he seemed to see the shadows shift, as though darkness was the weakest place in the Cosm's wall, and there the cracks were beginning to show.

He looked for some comfort in the people around him, the tough, uncomplicated men and women who had chosen this joyless corner of the planet to call home. Surely there was some reserve of hard-won truth in them that would help him keep the delirium at arm's distance. He couldn't ask for evidence of it outright, of course (they already viewed his presence with suspicion enough), but he made a point of listening to their exchanges, hoping to find some plain wisdom there that could be used against the insanities he felt creeping upon him. But there was no solace in his study. they were as sad and cruel and lost as any people he'd encountered. By day they made their dull rounds with sullen faces, their feelings locked out of sight. By night, the men got drunk (and sometimes violent) while the women stayed home, watching the same chat shows and cop shows that softened wits from coast to coast.

He was glad to go, finally, into Minnesota, where he'd read of an incident of cult murder outside Duluth, and hoped to discover Kissoon's hand at work. He was disappointed. The day after his arrival, the cultists-two brothers and their shared mistress, all three in severely psychotic states-were arrested and admitted to the slaughter.

With the trail growing colder by the hour, he contemplated traveling down into Nebraska and hooking up with Grillo in Omaha. It was not his preference-the man's contempt still rankled-but he increasingly suspected he had no choice. He put off calling Grillo for a day. Then, finally, dulling his irritation with half a bottle of scotch, he made the call, only to discover that Grillo wasn't home. He declined to leave a message, fearful as ever that the wrong ears would be attending to it. Instead, he finished off the other half bottle, ;ttid went to bed drunker than he'd been in many a year.

And he dreamed; dreamed he was back in Wyckoff Street, up in that foul room with the demon that had slaughtered Father Hess, its flesh like embers in a gusty wind, dimiiiing and brightening in the murky air.

It had called itself by many names during the long hours of their confrontation: the Hammennite, Peter the Nomad, Lazy Susan. But towards the end, either out of fatigue or boredom, it gave up all its personas but one.

"I am DAmour," it had said, over and over. "I am you and you are love and that's what makes the world go round.

It must have repeated this nonsense two hundred, three hundred times, always finding some fresh way to deliver it as wisdom from the pulpit, as an invitation to intercourse, as a skipping song-until it had imprinted the words on Harry's mind so forcibly he knew they'd be circling his skull forever.

He woke strangely calmed by the dream. It was as though his subconscious was making a connection his conscions mind could not, pointing him back to that terrible time as a source of wisdom. His head thumping, he drove in search of a twenty-four hour coffee shop, and finding one out on the highway, sat there until dawn, puzzling over the words. It was not the first time he'd done so, of course. Far sweeter memories had died in his cortex, gone forever into whatever oblivion happiness is consigned, but the demon's words had never left his head.

I am you, it had proclaimed. Well, that was plain enough. What internal seducer had not tried confounding its victim with the thought that this was all a game with mirrors?

And you are love, it had murmured. That didn't seem to demand much exegesis either. His name was D'Amour, after all.

And that's what makes the world go round, it had gasped. A cliche, of course, rendered virtually meaningless by repetition. It offered nothing by way of insight.

And yet, there was meaning here; he was certain of it. The words had been designed as a trap, baited with a sliver of significance. He had simply never understood what that significance was. Nor did pondering it over half a dozen cups of coffee, and-as dawn came up-Canadian bacon and three eggs over easy, give him the answer. He would just have to move on, and trust that fate would bring him to Kissoon.

Fortified, he returned to his motel, and again consulted the map he had taken from the hovel in morningside Heights.

There were several other sites his quarry had deemed worthy of marking, though none of them had been as significant to him as New York or Jamestown. One was in Florida, one in Oregon, two in Arizona; plus another six or seven. Where was he to begin? He decided on Arizona, for no better reason than he'd loved a woman once who'd been born and bred in Phoenix.

The trip took him five days, and brought him at last to Mammoth, Arizona, and a street corner where a woman with a voice like water over rock called him by his name. She was tiny, her skin like brown paper that had been used and screwed up a dozen times, eyes so deeply set he was never quite certain if they were on him at all.

"I'm Maria Lourdes Nazareno," she told him. "I've been waiting for you sixteen days."

"I didn't realize I was expected," Harry replied.

"Always," the woman said. "How is Tesla, by the way?"

"You know Tesla?"

"I met her on this same corner, three years ago."

"Popular place," Harry remarked, "is there something special about it?"

"Yes," the woman replied, with a little laugh. "Me. How is she?"

"As crazy as ever, last time we spoke," Harry said.

"And you? Are you crazy too?"

"Very possibly."

The response seemed to please the woman. She lifted her head, and for the first time Harry saw her eyes. Her irises were flecked with gold.

"I gave Tesla a gun," the woman went on. "Does she still have it?" Harry didn't reply. "D'Amour?"

"Are you what I think you are?" Harry murmured.

"What do you mean?"

"You know damn well."

Again, the smile. "It was the eyes that gave it away, yes? Tesla didn't notice. But then I think she was high that day."

"Are there many of you?"

"A very few," Maria replied, "and the greater part of all of us is Sapas Humana. But there's a tiny piece"-she put thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart to demonstrate how little-"a tiny piece of me which Quiddity calls to. It makes me wise."